Collective expiations.

Question. – Spiritism explains perfectly the cause of individual sufferings, as immediate consequences of the faults committed in the preceding existence, or as expiation of the past; but, since each one is responsible only for his own faults, the collective misfortunes that strike gatherings of individuals, sometimes an entire family, a whole city, a whole nation, a whole race, and that fall upon the good as well as upon the wicked, upon the innocent as well as upon the guilty, are not satisfactorily explained.

Answer. – All the laws that govern the Universe, whether physical or moral, material or intellectual, were discovered, studied, understood, starting from the study of the individual and of the family toward that of the whole grouping, generalizing them gradually and demonstrating the universality of their results.

The same is verified today with regard to the laws that the study of Spiritism makes known. The laws that govern the individual may be applied, without fear of error, to the family, to the nation, to the races, to the whole body of inhabitants of worlds, which form collective individualities. There are the faults of the individual, those of the family, those of the nation; and each one, whatever its character may be, is expiated by virtue of the same law. The executioner, with respect to his victim, whether by coming to find himself in his presence in space, or by living in contact with him in one or in many successive existences, until the reparation of the evil committed. The same occurs when it is a matter of crimes committed jointly by a certain number of persons. The expiations are likewise joint, which does not suppress the simultaneous expiation of individual faults. There are three characters in every man: that of the individual, of the being in himself; that of the member of the family, and, finally, that of the citizen. Under each of these three aspects he may be criminal and virtuous, that is, he may be virtuous as a father of a family, while at the same time criminal as a citizen, and reciprocally. Hence the special situations that he creates for himself in his successive existences.

Save for some exception, it may be admitted as a general rule that all those who in one existence come to be united by a common task have already lived together to work toward the same objective, and will still find themselves united in the future, until they have attained the goal, that is, expiated the past, or fulfilled the mission they accepted.

Thanks to Spiritism, you now understand the justice of the trials that do not derive from the acts of the present life, because you recognize that they are the redemption of the debts of the past. Why should it not be so with regard to collective trials? You say that misfortunes of a general order reach the innocent as well as the guilty; but do you not know that the innocent of today may be the guilty of yesterday? Whether he is struck individually or collectively, it is because he deserved it. Then, as we have already said, there are the faults of the individual and those of the citizen; the expiation of the one does not exempt from the expiation of the others, for every debt must be paid down to the last coin. The virtues of private life differ from those of public life. One who is an excellent citizen may be a very bad father of a family; another, who is a good father of a family, upright and honest in his business, may be a bad citizen, may have blown upon the fire of discord, oppressed the weak, stained his hands in crimes against society. It is these collective faults that are expiated collectively by the individuals who contributed to them, who find themselves united once more, to suffer together the retaliatory penalty, or to have occasion to repair the evil they committed, demonstrating devotion to the public cause, succoring and assisting those whom they once mistreated. Thus, what is incomprehensible, irreconcilable with the justice of God, becomes clear and logical through the knowledge of this law. Solidarity, therefore, which is the true social bond, is not so only for the present; it extends to the past and to the future, for the same individualities have united, unite, and will unite, to climb together the ladder of progress, helping one another mutually. There is what Spiritism makes comprehensible, by means of the equitable law of reincarnation and of the continuity of the relations between the same beings.

Clélie Duplantier. n

Observation. – Although it is subordinate to the known principles of responsibility for the past and of the continuity of the relations between the Spirits, this communication contains an idea in a certain way new and of great importance. The distinction it establishes between the responsibility deriving from individual or collective faults, from those of private life and from public life, explains certain facts still poorly known and shows in a more precise manner the solidarity existing between beings and between the generations.

Thus, often an individual is reborn in the same family, or, at least, the members of a family are reborn together to constitute a new family in another social position, in order to tighten the bonds of affection among themselves, or to repair reciprocal wrongs. By considerations of a more general order, the creature is reborn in the same milieu, in the same nation, in the same race, whether by sympathy, or to continue, with the elements already elaborated, studies begun, in order to perfect himself, to carry on works undertaken which the brevity of life did not allow him to finish. Reincarnation in the same milieu is the determining cause of the distinctive character of peoples and of races. Although improving themselves, individuals retain the primary shade, until progress has completely transformed them. The French of today are, then, those of the past century, those of the Middle Ages, those of the druidic times; they are the exactors and the victims of feudalism; those who subjugated other peoples and those who labored for their emancipation, who find themselves in a transformed France, where some expiate, in humiliation, their pride of race, and where others enjoy the fruit of their labors. When one considers all the crimes of those times in which the life of men and the honor of families were held in no account, in which fanaticism kindled stakes in honor of the divinity; when one thinks of all the abuses of power, of all the injustices that were committed in contempt of the most sacred rights, who can be certain of not having participated more or less in all that, and be astonished at witnessing great and terrible collective expiations? But, from these social convulsions, an improvement always results; the Spirits are enlightened by experience; misfortune is a stimulant that impels them to seek a remedy for the evil; in erraticity, they reflect, take new resolutions, and when they return, they do something better. It is thus that, from generation to generation, progress is effected.

It cannot be doubted that there are guilty families, cities, nations, races, because, dominated by instincts of pride, of egoism, of ambition, of cupidity, they set out upon a bad path and do collectively what an individual does in isolation. One family enriches itself at the expense of another; one people subjugates another people, bringing it desolation and ruin; one race strives to annihilate another race. This is the reason why there are families, peoples, and races upon which the retaliatory penalty descends.

“Whoever has killed by the sword shall perish by the sword,” are words of the Christ, words that may be translated thus: He who caused blood to flow will see his own also shed; he who carried the torch of fire to what belonged to another will see fire kindled in what belongs to him; he who despoiled will be despoiled; he who enslaves and mistreats the weak will in his turn be enslaved and mistreated, whether it is a matter of an individual, or of a nation, or of a race, because the members of a collective individuality are jointly bound, in the good as well as in the evil that they have committed in common. Whereas Spiritism enlarges the field of solidarity, materialism restricts it to the petty proportions of the existence of man, making of that same solidarity a social duty without roots, without any sanction other than the goodwill and the personal interest of the moment. It is a mere theory, a mere philosophical maxim, whose practice nothing imposes. For Spiritism, solidarity is a fact that rests upon a universal law of Nature, which binds all beings of the past, of the present, and of the future, and from whose consequences no one can withdraw. This is something that every man can understand, however little instructed he may be. When all men understand Spiritism, they will also understand true solidarity and, consequently, true fraternity. The one and the other will then cease to be mere circumstantial duties, which each one preaches most often in his own interest and not in that of others. The reign of solidarity and of fraternity will necessarily be that of justice for all, and that of justice will be that of peace and of harmony among individuals, families, peoples, and races. Will that reign come? To doubt its advent would be to deny progress. If we compare the present society, in the civilized nations, with what it was in the Middle Ages, we shall recognize the difference to be great. Now, if men have advanced thus far, why should they stop? By observing the course they have made in but a single century, one may gauge what they will do another century hence. Social convulsions are revolts of incarnate Spirits against the evil that goads them, an index of their aspirations toward that reign of justice for which they long, without, however, clearly perceiving what they want and the means of attaining it. That is why they stir, agitate, overturn everything this way and that, create systems, propose remedies more or less utopian, even commit injustices without number, out of a spirit, so they say, of justice, hoping that from this movement perchance something may come forth. Later, they will define their aspirations better, and the path will grow clearer to them. Whoever descends to the core of the principles of philosophical Spiritism, who considers the horizons it unveils, the ideas to which it gives rise, and the sentiments it develops, will not doubt the preponderant part it must have in the regeneration, for, precisely and by the force of things, it leads to the objective to which Humanity aspires: to the reign of justice, through the extinction of the abuses that have obstructed its progress, and through the moralization of the masses. If those who dream of the restoration of the past did not understand it thus, they would not cling so tightly to that dream; they would let it die tranquilly, as has happened to many utopias. This, in itself alone, ought to give certain scoffers something to think about, making them ponder that perhaps there is in it something more serious than they imagine. But there are persons who laugh at everything, who would laugh even at God, were they to see Him on the Earth. There are also those who are afraid that to their eyes there may appear the soul they obstinately deny. Whatever the influence that Spiritism may one day come to exert upon societies, let it not be supposed that it will come to substitute one aristocracy for another, nor to impose laws; firstly, because, proclaiming the absolute right to liberty of conscience and to free examination in matters of faith, it desires, as a belief, to be freely accepted, through conviction and not by means of constraint. By its nature, it can neither nor should exert any pressure. Proscribing blind faith, it desires to be understood. For it, there are absolutely no mysteries, but a rational faith, which is based upon facts and which desires the light. It repudiates no discovery of Science, given that Science is the collection of the laws of Nature, and that, these laws being of God, to repudiate Science would be to repudiate the work of God. In the second place, the action of Spiritism being in its moralizing power, it cannot assume any autocratic form, because it would then do what it condemns. Its influence will be preponderant, through the modifications it will bring to the ideas, the opinions, the characters, the customs of men, and the social relations. And that influence will be the greater, by the circumstance of not being imposed. Strong as a philosophy, Spiritism would have only to lose, in this century of reasoning, if it were transformed into a temporal power. It will not be Spiritism, therefore, that will make the institutions of the regenerated world; it is men who will make them, under the sway of the ideas of justice, of charity, of fraternity, and of solidarity, but well understood, thanks to Spiritism. Essentially positive in its beliefs, it repels all mysticism, provided that this denomination is not extended, as is done by those who believe in nothing, to the belief in God, in the soul, and in the future life. It induces men, it is true, to occupy themselves seriously with the spiritual life, but because that is the normal life, it being in it that our destinies are to be fulfilled, for terrestrial life is transitory, fleeting. By the proofs it presents of the reality of the spiritual life, it teaches men to attribute no more than relative importance to the things of this world, thus giving them strength and courage to bear with patience the vicissitudes of terrestrial life. It teaches them that, in dying, they do not leave this world forever; that they may return to it, in order to perfect their intellectual and moral education, unless they are already advanced enough to deserve to pass to a better world; that the works and progress they accomplish, or to whose accomplishment they contribute, will profit them, contributing to making their future position better. It shows them in that manner that it is altogether in their interest not to despise it. If it is repugnant to them to return here, since they possess free will, it depends upon them to do what is necessary to become inhabitants of other orbs; but let them not delude themselves about the conditions they must fulfill to deserve a change of residence! It will not be by means of some formulas, expressed in words or acts, that they will attain it, but by effect of a serious and radical reform of their imperfections, modifying themselves, divesting themselves of the evil passions, acquiring day by day new qualities, teaching all, by example, the line of conduct that will lead all men jointly to felicity, through fraternity, through tolerance, through love. Humanity is composed of personalities, which constitute the individual existences, and of generations, which constitute the collective existences. The one and the other advance on the path of progress, through varied phases of trials which, therefore, are individual for persons and collective for generations. In the same way that, for the incarnate one, each existence is a step forward, each generation marks a degree of progress for the whole. This progress of the whole is irresistible and draws the masses along, while at the same time modifying and transforming into an instrument of regeneration the errors and prejudices of a past that must disappear. Now, as the generations are composed of the individuals who have already lived in the preceding generations, it follows that their progress is the resultant of the progress of the individuals. But who will demonstrate, they may say, the existence of solidarity between the present generation and those that preceded it, or between it and those that will succeed it? How could it be proved that I have already lived in the Middle Ages, for example, and that I will return to take part in the events that will be produced in the succession of times?

In the fundamental works of the Doctrine and in the Review, the principle of the plurality of existences has already been exhaustively demonstrated, that we should still pause here to demonstrate it. In the facts of daily life proofs and an almost mathematical demonstration teem. We limit ourselves, then, to urging thinkers to attend to the moral proofs that derive from reasoning and from induction.

Is it, perchance, necessary that we see a thing, in order that we believe in it? By observing effects, can one not acquire the material certainty of the cause?

Apart from that of experience, the only legitimate path that opens for investigation consists in going back from the effect to the cause. Justice offers us a most notable example of this principle, when it undertakes to discover the indications of the means that served the perpetration of a crime, the intentions that attach to the culpability of the malefactor. The latter was not caught in the act, and yet he is condemned upon these indications.

Science, which claims to walk solely by the way of experience, affirms every day principles that are nothing but inductions of causes by means solely of the observation of effects.

In geology, the age of mountains is determined. Did the geologists, perchance, witness their rise? Did they see the layers of sediment that determine their age form?

The astronomical, physical, and chemical knowledge permits the weight of the planets, their densities, their volumes, the velocity that animates them, the nature of the elements that compose them, to be assessed; meanwhile, the learned have not made direct experiments, and it is to analogy and to induction that we owe such beautiful and precious discoveries.

The men of old, based upon the testimonies of their senses, affirmed that it was the Sun that turns around the Earth. Nevertheless, that testimony deceived them, and reasoning prevailed.

The same will happen with the principles that Spiritism sustains, once people dispose themselves to study them, without prejudices, and, then, Humanity will enter, really and rapidly, into an era of progress and of regeneration, because, no longer feeling themselves isolated between two abysses, the unknown of the past and the uncertainty of the future, individuals will work with energy to perfect and multiply the elements of the happiness that must be their own work, because they will recognize that the position they occupy in the world is not due to chance and that they themselves will enjoy, in the future and in better conditions, the fruit of their labors and of their vigils. It is that Spiritism will teach them that, if the faults collectively committed are jointly expiated, the progress realized in common is equally joint, a principle by virtue of which the dissensions of races, of families, and of individuals will disappear, and Humanity, freed from the swaddling bands of infancy, will advance, swift and virile, toward the conquest of its true destinies. Allan Kardec.

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[v. Clélie Duplantier.]